JESSNER, LEOPOLD

born March 3, 1878, Knigsberg, Ger. [now Kaliningrad, Russia] died Oct. 30, 1945, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S. theatrical producer and director associated with the German Expressionist theatre; his bold innovations in the 1920s gained him an international reputation. Jessner worked as a touring actor in his youth. The first play he directed was Molire's Tartuffe in 1911. As director of the Berlin State Theatre (191925), he produced classic and contemporary plays on a bare, denaturalized stage on which graduated levels and flights of steps served in the place of scene changes as platforms for different actions. Memorable performances were Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, Shakespeare's Richard III, and a Hamlet in modern dress slanted to be a criticism of the Germany of the 1920s. He trained his actors to adopt an oversimplified, antinaturalistic manner, which was especially effective for interpretations of the possessed and frenzied characters in the plays of the early Expressionist Frank Wedekind. His most famous production, Wedekind's Marquis von Keith (1920), was performed at double speed. A Socialist and a Jew, Jessner was an active innovator in the theatre until 1933, when he emigrated from Nazi Germany to Hollywood, where he engaged anonymously in film work until his death.